A man was sentenced to time in federal prison after prosecutors said he hacked his former employer’s communications network and left the company with more than $800,000 in damage.
Federal prosecutors said Charles E. Taylor “deliberately sabotaged” the company’s computer network because he was “upset with his former employer.” A federal judge sentenced the 60-year-old to a year and a half behind bars followed by three years of supervised release.
Taylor, of Jacksonville, Arkansas, was hired as a systems administrator for a lumber and building materials wholesaler in 2013, according to U.S. Attorney BJay Pak. In 2018, the company was acquired by a large distributor based in Atlanta, Pak said.
Taylor kept his job after the merger, but he was “unhappy with the newly combined company” and resigned, Pak said.
“A month after his departure, Taylor conducted a multistage sabotage campaign targeting the company’s network,” Pak said.
Prosecutors said the man logged into the company’s network remotely in August using information he learned during his employment. He then encrypted his network connections to hide them, Pak said.
According to authorities, Taylor changed the passwords to network routers in “dozens of company warehouses,” leaving employees unable to access them. Replacing the routers cost the company about $100,000, Pak said.
A few days later, Taylor activated a command that shut down the company’s central server, Pak said. The incident crippled the company’s communications, according to Pak.
“As the company worked to restore its network over a two-day period, employees at several of its branches were forced to take customer orders by hand and field incoming orders using their personal cellphones,” he said. “In total, the server sabotage cost the company over $700,000 in lost profits and remediation costs.”
Taylor was convicted after pleading guilty to one count of computer fraud, Pak said.
As part of his sentence, Taylor was ordered to pay $834,510 in restitution.
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